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This year, around 45,000 students were placed in a higher education institution through the national entrance exam, which shows that there are five thousand fewer freshmen than last year.
The results of the last phase of the National Higher Education Access Competition (CNAES) were released today by the Directorate-General for Higher Education (DGES), showing that universities and polytechnic institutes now have 45,290 new students, that is, 10% less than last year, when 50,612 candidates were placed.
The hypothesis that fewer students would be entering higher education this year began to be raised when it became known that there were fewer candidates for the 1st phase of the CNAES, a theory reinforced by the results of the 1st placements which showed that only 44 thousand students obtained a place, 12% less than the previous year and the lowest number since 2016.
Placements have always remained below previous years and this 3rd and final opportunity to enter higher education through CNAES was no exception: only 801 new placements, less than double the number of last year.
Of the 801 new freshmen, 471 secured a place at a university and the remaining 330 at a polytechnic, according to the results available on the DGES website.
Rectors, polytechnic presidents, and student associations have cited several reasons for the decline in student enrollment, from high housing prices to the financial hardships of families unable to afford to keep a child studying away from home, to the requirement to take national exams to graduate from secondary school.
The problem isn’t related to the number of places offered by higher education institutions. In this third phase alone, for example, 3,046 students applied for the 6,710 available places. Across the three phases, 55,292 places were available, and 45,290 students were placed.
The majority of new students were placed in the university subsystem, which now has around 29,000 “freshmen”, registering an occupancy rate of 92.8%.
Once again this year, it was in polytechnic institutes that the most vacancies remained unfilled, with an occupancy rate of 67.7.2% after the admission of 16,271 new students.
The polytechnic institutes of Tomar, Bragança, Guarda and Beja had the lowest occupancy rates (less than 40%), as opposed to the universities of Coimbra, Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Porto, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and Escola Superior de Enfermagem in Lisbon, which saw more than 95% of the available places occupied.
For students now placed, registration and enrollment takes place between October 1st and 3rd at the higher education institution.
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